


Stay with him if you can (but be prepared to bleed)

by mjonesing (klassmartin)



Series: Music sounds better with you [10]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: F/M, There is no technical about this, this is straight up MCD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27251035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klassmartin/pseuds/mjonesing
Summary: It’s not intentional, but she has a habit of painting while he’s gone.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Series: Music sounds better with you [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921150
Comments: 14
Kudos: 17
Collections: The Spideychelle Shuffle





	Stay with him if you can (but be prepared to bleed)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iovewords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iovewords/gifts).



> For the Spideychelle Shuffle Game: Decades Edition
> 
> Song is A Case of You by Joni Mitchell

##  _ “Oh, I am a lonely painter, _

_ I live in a box of paints, _

_ I'm frightened by the devil, _

_ And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid. _

_ I remember that time you told me, you said, _

_ "Love is touching souls." _

_ Surely you touched mine, 'cause, _

_ Part of you pours out of me, _

_ In these lines from time to time.” _

  
It’s not intentional, but she has a habit of painting while he’s gone. Sometimes it’s canvas, or maybe recycled delivery boxes. Sometimes it spills over onto the walls and furniture, a growing mural of moments in time she wants to forget but won’t - not when it’s so important. 

Sometimes it’s just a thick coat of indigo on her fingernails. Others it’s a hundred vibrant hues of red and blue and yellow, mixing and swirling and combining until the feeling from her chest is gone. 

Ned likes to watch her when it gets bad. Usually, the absences don’t last long or they’re kept up to date, are aware of everything that happens from moment to moment. But there are times when it’s not so simple, or they have no information, or they‘re watching the world burn on the news and sightings of a local man dressed in a multi-million dollar supersuit are few and far between. 

So Ned keeps her company. It’s something to do that isn’t waiting. She paints, he watches, and when the world returns to spin on its axis, they continue with their regular lives as if they hadn’t spent hours or days or  _ weeks _ lost in the nothingness.

It’s different this time. He’s right there beside her but still she paints. Strokes of navy and burgundy and jet black in an endless and random pattern. The paint pools on the floor beneath her but that feeling in her chest still burns, so she carries on, ditching the brush in favour of her fingers, the stains of her turmoil coating her hands; her arms; her face as she wipes furiously at her dry cheeks. 

Ned sleeps behind her, time dragging him into a world where everything is still okay. 

A slice of white eases its way down the painting. The feeling grows, pulsing now behind her sternum. She has never had to learn what sits on the other side of it, but she’s frantic now, acrylic oozing between her fingers as her palms press into the hazy mess of her thoughts. 

It is May’s hand on her shoulder that brings the end. 

They stare at the drenched canvas, and maybe she can see it too, how he bleeds through the spaces in between; his laugh in the curved edges of red, his gentle touch in a sweep of shining yellow, his gaze in the slash of murky blue. He is everywhere she looks, yet still the pain grows, burning and throbbing and spreading until -

May grips her harder, a sound she should never have to have made again clawing it’s way out of her throat, and she knows. 

The ache disappears. 

The painting is finished. 

**Author's Note:**

> @mjonesing on Tumblr as always


End file.
